It’s late Sunday night in Las Vegas as I write this from my hotel room – Cisco’s day one MMS 2013 blog post. It has been a long day already here at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center getting set up for the show… Our Cisco booth is complete; UCS, Nexus 1000V, FlexPod, and VSPEX Engineers have their demos loaded and ready to go; the always popular Cisco t-shirts are stocked and ready to be handed out; the Event team is here and primed.

Over dinner tonight I was mulling over with my core event team what to write about in this blog. For some reason, and I forget why, we had been discussing Napoleon at the table. So, I started searching for some famous Napoleon quotes that might apply to technology, I.T. management, and Cisco’s activities at MMS 2013.

I found this quote from Napoleon Bonaparte: “Imagination rules the world”. Those four simple words are so very true when it comes to the power inherent in Cisco’s Nexus 1000V and UCS management capabilities. We’ve all learned about the powerful hardware architecture of UCS – with its modular approach to helping you deliver a modern datacenter for compute, networking, virtualization, and storage. I think at MMS 2013 though people will see the imagination, and innovation if I can add to that, of what Cisco UCS Manager and Nexus 1000V Engineers have delivered for Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1.

Cisco’s management portfolio is focused on doing what we know best – managing the compute, network, and virtualization infrastructure layers. We partner in the most complementary way with Microsoft’s System Center management portfolio. Together we offer a true ‘better together’ model affording end to end management ranging from the hardware chassis to the business transaction.

So, if you are at MMS 2013 this week, check us out in booth #501. We’ve got a set of demos anchored by Nexus 1000V and its integration into the Hyper-V Extensible Switch as well as a strong set of Cisco UCS Manager and Cisco PowerTool for PowerShell demos. Completing our demos is kiosk’s devoted to our private cloud solutions with our strategic partners NetApp and EMC respectively FlexPod, VSPEX.

We’re doing quite a bit actually…if you’re headed to the Microsoft Management Summit 2013 show in Las Vegas in a few weeks, stop by our booth, grab a t-shirt, and see us demo our UCS Manager and Nexus 1000V capabilities and more…

Cisco’s technology investments for Windows Server 2012 & System Center 2012 center primarily on the hardware, management and networking segments with our UCS, UCS Manager, Cisco PowerTool, Nexus 1000V, and VM-FEX offerings. These investments help to drive simplification and automation for you – saving time and money.

Feel free to read and download documents from our library below:

Learn more about how Cisco can provide an optimum datacenter environment for your Microsoft investments at www.cisco.com/go/microsoft

We’ve mentioned earlier that Cisco is again a platinum sponsor at this year’s Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas. We’ll showcase UCS, UCS Manager, PowerTool for PowerShell, and many other management solutions and technologies. Two speaking sessions are dedicated to Cisco technology as well – see details below. So, don’t gamble away your chance to learn from Cisco Product Managers and Engineers on our integration with the Hyper-V Extensible Switch and System Center! Details on our presence can be found at www.cisco.com/go/mms

Server virtualization and cloud environments provide many benefits to enterprise customers. However, the dynamic nature of these environments and IT operational practices presents additional complexities for virtual machine networking. This session covers how Cisco virtual networking solutions (Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX) can help simplify virtual networking. It shows how they help to enable consistency across physical and virtual networks and provide an advanced networking feature set. The session also details Cisco integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager to provide a non-disruptive operational model to the server team. Attend this session to learn about Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX architecture. Also discover the virtual networking services they bring to Hyper-V environments, and how they can simplify network operations.

We’re participating in a small way via sponsorship with Microsoft in their Cloud OS Trivia Challenge. Join your peers in the Microsoft Cloud OS Trivia Challenge; test your knowledge with trivia for a chance to win some excellent prizes-including a trip to MMS 2013. You also have a chance to win a Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows Server, or a Linksys Router. Play Now!

Each year Windows IT Proannounces their Editors’ Best and Community Choice awards recognizing the hottest products in the world of Microsoft. The Editors Best award highlight products that the Windows IT Pro editors and contributors believe are worthy of recognition. The Community Choice awards lets the Windows IT Pro readers from around the world decide which products are the best.

For 2012 Cisco was honored with 5 awards – covering Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Our Catalyst switch took home Gold in the networking category with Cisco’s Technical Support organization winning Silver. We wrapped up this medal trifecta with a Bronze for our UCS server family.

The Windows IT Pro awards complement our June 2012 Best of Tech Ed award for UCS Manager and when combined together they show the breadth and depth of our capabilities for our Microsoft server and workload solutions.

Read more on the awards and recipients here. To learn more on Cisco and our offerings for Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server please visit www.cisco.com/go/microsoft.

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